[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 209 (Thursday, December 21, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S8191]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          REPUBLICAN TAX BILL

  Mr. SCHUMER. Now, Mr. President, on tax. Earlier this week, the 
Senate passed one of the worst pieces of legislation in at least a 
decade, maybe longer. The Republican tax bill will go down in history 
as a rushed, sloppy, partisan rewrite of the Tax Code that benefited 
those who already have so much while doing little or hurting those who 
have too little. It will be remembered as throwing the extraordinary 
income inequality we see today into overdrive and fulfilling very few 
of the ambitious Republican promises about growth, job creation, and 
deficit reduction. But perhaps most of all, the Republican tax bill 
will define the Republican Party as the party of the rich and powerful, 
the party against the middle class, and that will be a rubric we will 
hear from now until next November and even further on.
  Yesterday in the Oval Office, President Trump admitted that cutting 
the corporate tax rate was ``probably the biggest factor in our plan.'' 
Despite all his rhetoric about this being a middle-class tax bill, as 
soon as it passes, he admits that lowering the corporate rate was the 
Republicans' primary goal.
  As corporations get a massive, permanent tax break, individuals will 
get small and temporary ones. By 2027, 145 million American families 
making under $200,000--83 percent of the middle class--will be either 
paying more in taxes or get a cut of less than $100. That is according 
to the Joint Committee on Taxation--no partisan affiliation. Meanwhile, 
the top 1 percent of income earners in our country will reap 83 percent 
of the benefits from this tax plan. Those facts are what make this bill 
so dramatically unpopular with the American people by a 2-to-1 margin 
in some polls, and next year the American people will have the 
opportunity to reject this bill and move our country in a different 
direction.

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